Three Singaporeans, Loh Foy-tau, Mok Kwok-kee, and Lee Kee-yong,
and a Fujian native, Chen Peixiang, were given jail
terms ranging from nine to 14 years by the Shanghai No 1
Intermediate People's Court yesterday.
They were found guilty of operating an underground bank.
Loh received 14 years, Mok 14 years, Lee 13 years and Chen, nine
years.
The Singaporeans will be deported on completion of their
sentences.
The gang, headed by Loh, 30, had remitted 5.3 billion yuan
abroad in foreign currencies from December 2003 to April last year
on instructions of the boss of Blooming Enterprises (BE), a
Singapore currency exchange company. The court did not mention the
name of the boss.
They had offices in Shanghai and Suzhou, Jiangsu Province, and opened 68 private accounts in 11
different banks for the illegal trade.
They operated money transfer services between China and foreign
countries without authorization.
The gang said they did not know it was against the law as it was
legal in Singapore. But a scanned copy of a report on China's rules
against money laundering was found in Loh's computer.
Since last year, China has imposed stricter rules to curb money
laundering.
Early this year, Wu Ying, a 26-year-old woman in Yiwu, Zhejiang Province, was found to have been operating an
underground bank. She was said to have assets of at least 3.8
billion yuan. She has been arrested and is still being
investigated.
Loh aroused suspicion early last year when he went to the Pudong
branch of the Bank of Communications almost every day to transfer
large amounts of money.
The bank examined his records and reported to the city's
anti-money laundering department. The gang was arrested in
April.
The case also resulted in a raid on one of its major clients, an
Internet foreign currency exchange in Tianjin.
It allegedly cheated clients out of millions of yuan. The
company claimed it could provide access to foreign currencies and
margin trading. The company told clients it could turn a relatively
small deposit into a 10-fold profit.
The case is said to be the first of its kind to be cracked and
is still under investigation.
(China Daily August 7, 2007)
